“You mean—”
“When does he film the scene where Harp gets shot? Is it still on the schedule for this morning?” Stone was striding around the hot roof yelling instructions into a bullhorn, the crown of his bwana hat already soaked with sweat. Everything seemed to be in chaos. Boone slipped a straw into the ice water then formed my trembling hands around the cup and made me sip some more. “The scene’s still on for this morning, Gracie. But there’s no good reason for you to stay here and watch it. Nobody expects you to.”
“I was sitting in a TV studio watching on a monitor when Harp was shot. It was the most helpless feeling in the world. I have to see it happen in person, this time. I owe that to Harp.”
“Chere, don’t ever forget—this is just a movie.”
“Not today. Today it’s real.” I pointed to a concrete bulwark in the distance, where the crew was setting up. “Right there. That’s where it happened. Where Harp fought the Turn-Key. Where he fell. With the helicopters from the Atlanta TV stations overhead.” I stepped out of the tent and stared up into a hot, empty blue sky. “The helicopters need to be here. It’s not the way he died, not without them.”
“They’ll be added later. You know—in a studio somewhere. All edited into place, with the right sound effects and all. All fake.” He turned me to face him. “Gracie, look at me. Look up at me. Straight at me. That’s it. That’s good. Come out of there. Come out from inside yourself. Come out here with me. You’re real. I’m real. We’re real.”
“I know I sound crazy.”
“Crazy’s okay, chere. Just stop lookin’ two years back. Look ahead.”
“I don’t see anything ahead of me. Just a world without Harp.”
I hurt Boone. I hurt him with that simple remark, which had nothing to do with loving him, in my mind, but of course it sounded very much like that, to him. Boone winced. “Well, try to keep lookin’ for something or somebody worth lookin’ toward,” he said dully, then angled away from me so I couldn’t see his face. He latched a hand under my elbow again. Steadying me, even as I’d unstreadied him.
I fumbled with some kind of apology, explanation, something. Before I could say it, Abbie rushed up. “Grace,” she moaned. “Grace, I want to stand right here and watch the scene with you.” She leaned against me, draping one willowy arm around me in a hug, bowing her head to mine even though I barely flexed to accommodate her sympathy. If I lost control of one single muscle, of one nerve fiber, even one molecule of my body, the emotional tidal wave would break free.
Boone, I’m sorry, I thought, but couldn’t get the thought out of my locked jaw.
“Grace.” Another voice, deep and drawling. Marvin’s accent, but not Marvin. Like Harp’s voice, but not Harp. I pivoted and stared at Lowe. He was dressed in khakis and an oversized white t-shirt. The floppy shirt clung to mysterious small bulges beneath it, dotting his chest. Lowe gave me an agonized smile. “I’ve finally got Harp’s voice right, didn’t I?”
“Yes. Yes, you’ve done it. You sound like him.”
“Grace, I’m sorry —”
“It’s all right. Go and do your job.”
He reached out, squeezed my hand, then squeezed Abbie’s outstretched hand. “Grace,” he said to her. “I love you. Goodbye.”
Abbie began to cry. I was too stunned.
As Lowe walked away, I leaned numbly toward Boone. “Why is he wearing that huge t-shirt and what’s he wearing underneath it?”
Boone was quiet for too long before he finally admitted, “They’ve rigged him to bleed when he’s shot.”
I stood very still for a few seconds, absorbing that information, then walked out into the blinding sun and headed straight for the hubbub of cameras, lights, reflectors, and microphones that now surrounded the place where Harp and the Turn-Key had fought to the death. I placed myself on the sidelines where could see every movement. I was dimly aware of Abbie crying softly behind me, and of Boone following me with his quiet, solid silence, not touching me but there if I needed him. I had brought him to the worst place a woman can bring a man who loves her, sharing a pit of grief for another man.
“On the set!” some assistant director yelled.
Lowe stepped into the center of the open space where Harp had been shot. He stood in the glare of artificial lights meant to tone down the sun. The special effects crew bustled around him. First they stripped of the utilitarian t-shirt, revealing a complex vest strapped to his bare chest. Wires intersected six tiny packets scattered between his collarbone and the bottom of his ribcage. The special effects team then brought over a button-up cotton shirt similar to the one Harp had worn—except this shirt already bore gaping, ragged holes. As my stomach slowly became a tourniquet, Lowe donned the shirt. The pre-fabricated bullet holes matched the location of each blood packet.
A dozen feet in front of Lowe, Stone peered through the lens of a camera mounted on a low platform. When he spotted me on the sidelines he frowned and lifted his bullhorn to his mouth. “Grace,” he barked, magnifying my name, echoing it off the hospital’s roof. “How’s our boy look? Not bad, right! Pretty accurate! This is going to be a great death scene!”
Fifty people stopped everything to look from Stone to me. Everyone’s mood was subdued, to say the least, and now some looked startled, even red-faced with embarrassment. As if Stone’s lack of sensitivity was anything new. Very little fazes a movie crew used to big egos and cavalier cruelty, but Stone managed to drop more than a few jaws. Lowe scowled, and behind me, Abbie moaned, “Oh, Stone, please.”
How could I even respond to the idiot? From behind, Boone bent his head close to my ear and whispered in a brutally controlled voice, “Just nod, Gracie. He’s not lookin’ for an opinion. Just an okay.”
I finally managed to move my head.
Stone grinned and gave me a thumbs up, then huddled behind the camera, again. “All right, Lowe, all you have to do is wait for the cue and then give me your best ‘I’m-being-shot-six-times’ reaction.”
Lowe scowled harder, braced his feet apart, and let his hands hang loosely by his sides.
After that, everything happened in a blur. I heard the cues called, and I watched Lowe stagger and jerk his arms in an expert rendition of a man being pummeled by the force of six bullets. Fake blood sprayed in huge, fan-shaped arcs from his chest.
I hadn’t been prepared for that. And especially not for what happened next by the sheer, strange quirk of timing, wind, and fate.
The blood hit me.
It was just a few flecks. Just a few errant drops of fake red dye that the breeze caught and flung my way. I felt the moisture strike my cheeks and forehead. I lifted a hand to my face, touched the wet spots, then lowered my hand and stared at the red on my fingertips.
I wasn’t upset by it, at that point. I was truly numb. I didn’t want to feel, or think, or look at Lowe, who was covered in streams of red, like some horror-movie victim. Had Harp bled like that as the news cameras taped the fight? I searched my sluggish brain. No, he’d just staggered backward, just gone red all over his shirt front, then forced himself forward, pulling his hunting knife from a sheath hidden in the curve of his back, flipping the knife blade into the cradle of his fingers with the agility I knew so well, just as he had that day in the dimestore, when we were kids. He drew back his right arm, posed the long, deadly hunting knife for a clean arc, then threw it with the last of his strength. It hit the Turn-Key in the center of the throat, and sank up to the hilt. The murderous bastard collapsed on hell-hot asphalt, his hand falling away from the switch on his vest that would have set off the massive bombs strapped to him.
Harp took a last few, staggering steps and stood over him, weaving, unsteady, alive just long enough to check that the job was done. Then slowly, almost gently, giving up the fight to the shadows that had always followed him, Harp sank to his knees, as if in prayer. Slowly he slid sideways. He settled on his back, gazing up at the blue summer sky for the last time, and then shut his eyes.
He was dead in spirit long before I watched him take his last breath in the ER. In real life, blood and grief color the darkness inside the heart. His beloved ladyslippers grew only in the lost and forgotten places, and died when moved unless handled with the utmost love. I had tried to move him, and failed.
“Somebody get me a wet cloth,” Boone yelled two years later. He had one arm around me, holding me up. But I wasn’t collapsing; I just stood there, looking at my bloodied hands. Abbie sobbed as she gripped my other hand, the one without fake blood on it; at least a dozen horrified crewmembers crowded around me, offering sweaty tissues, their shirt sleeves, their greasy work rags—whatever they had on them—if it would just get the blood off me. Lowe pushed his way through the crowd. He was crying.
“Ah, Grace,” he said hoarsely. “This is. . .ah, Grace. Grace. I’m so bloody sorry. I mean, damn. Bloody. I didn’t mean to put it that way.”
“Everybody back!” Stone yelled. He shoved through, grabbed his wide-brimmed safari hat off his head, and fanned me with it. “Everybody get back in place! Grace, you’re a trooper—you look fine. Let go of her, Noleene, she’s not gonna fall down—look at her, solid as a rock, not even shaky. Noleene, back off, I said.” Stone fanned me one more time, peered at me closely, then nodded. “Yep, she’s fine. Back off.”
“You back off, you dumb shit,” Boone said in a voice that could crack ice.
Stone stared at him. “What did you say to me?”
“Get out of her breathin’ space and shut up.”
Stone’s musclebound hackles bristled like the ruff on a big rooster. In all his blustery squabbles with Boone, Boone had never spoken to him in that tone, before. Boone had never told him to shut up, before.
“Have you lost your mind?” Stone yelled. He jerked a thumb toward an air-conditioned tent. “Noleene! Into my office! We need to have a talk! Right now!”
“We’re havin’ a talk, right here, right now,” Boone said quietly. “Get away from Grace and shut your mouth.”
Reality came back to me in a jolt. Boone had climbed onto my symbolic funeral pyre the day he met me atop the gravel pile, and he’d stayed there with me faithfully, ever since. Now he was about to set himself on fire—for my sake.
I grabbed Stone by the shirt. “Go back to your camera. Keep filming your gory scenes. I can stand it. This is all just make-believe. Harp’s dead and nothing you do or don’t do can change that fact. I don’t care how much fake blood you throw at his memory, this is still just a movie—and a lousy movie, at that. I’m beginning to understand that this movie not only can’t hurt my husband’s reputation, but that I’ve wasted my time even worrying about it. Because when Harp died on this rooftop he saved the lives of hundreds of people. Those lives have gone on because of him. There are hundreds of people alive in the world today because of him. They’re a living memorial that will go on in the lives of their children and the children of their children—and in all the children in all the generations to follow. Thousands of people, eventually millions of descendents will all owe their lives to one person, Harp Vance, who stood here on this rooftop and saved them.” I yanked on Stone’s shirt for emphasis then let go with a dismissive shove. “You only make movies. Harp made the future.”
Stone was practically emitting steam. “Grace, I can’t deal with a lecture right now! I’ve got a movie to make!” He focused on Boone, again. “And some ass to kick! Did you hear me, Noleene? I said I want to talk to you, in private, right now!”
Lowe flung up a gory, dripping hand. “First, I have something to say!” Everyone shrank back from more flying droplets of fake blood. Lowe jabbed a finger at Stone. “You can take this bloody bad movie and shove it. Today’s the last straw. I’m calling my agent. I quit.”
Stone nearly exploded. “Who do you think you are? You can’t quit on me! Nobody quits on Stone Senterra! You get your Aussie ass into the dressing tent and you get ready to do another take on this scene! Now, you kangaroo jockey!”
“Stick it up your outback, mate.” Lowe walked away.
Stone pointed to an assistant. “Get his agent on the phone, pronto! Get my lawyers! Get my wife!”
Abbie stepped forward. She looked determined but apologetic. “Stone? You might as well call my agent, too. Don’t tell me just to sit and putter. Nobody can rain on my parade. That’s a quote from Streisand. Or, at least, one of her movies. Good bye.” She headed after Lowe.
Stone threw down his hat. “When,” he suddenly yelled, “did I lose control of this movie?” He lasered Boone with a deadly look. “Noleene, this happened because of you. You and Grace. Always you and Grace together, always causing trouble!”
“I told you so!” Diamond said. She rushed through the crowd, dressed only in a skimpy robe from the dressing tent, her bright blonde hair up in hot rollers, her un-painted eyes gleaming like pale marbles of fury. “He and Grace planned this! Fire him! Fire him forever! I’ll have my security people throw him off the set! You promised me, Stone! You said one more fuck-up and he’s gone! Fire him!”
“Crawl back in your burrow, mole-eyes,” I said in a low voice.
Diamond lunged at me. Stone grabbed her around the waist.
“Watch out, she’s frothin’ at the mouth,” Boone warned, and stepped in front of me.
Stone pawed the air with his free arm. “Sis, I’ll handle this—”
“You promised! You swore on our mother’s rosary beads! In Italian.”
For the next minute or two, Stone was reduced to garbled, all-purpose yelling at his sister, with Diamond shouting back at him. Fire Boone Noleene. I’m the one who always gives you the best career advice! You should have listened to me! You promised to get rid of him if he screwed up again! You promised! Fire him!
Cheap, green gold, right to the core, I thought. I turned to Boone, planning to say so.
He was gone.
I searched for him in the crowd. My head swam. All right, he was just off getting me more ice water. I’d find him in a minute. Dazed, I left Stone and Diamond in the throes of shouting at each other and their assistants, while crew members scurried in all directions. I’d put Stone’s movie exactly where I’d always wanted it: In the toilet.
Funny, but that didn’t feel like much of a victory, anymore.
I walked over to the spot where Harp died. Movie blood spattered the asphalt in all directions. I knelt and touched the smeared surface. Underneath the illusion, Harp’s blood and spirit remained—sacred, loving, and infinite. Nothing else mattered.
He whispered to me.
I loved you so much. Now you understand why it’s all right to forget me.
When I finished crying, I stood and looked for Boone, again. I found only Tex and Mojo, waiting for me with sorrowful expressions. “Noleene said you needed to be alone, but not to let you be by yourself,” Tex explained. “So here we are.”
“Where is Boone?”
Mojo sighed. “He’s headed for Dahlonega, to pack his bags.”
I immediately started for the nearest doorway. “Stone will get over this. He can’t blame Boone. I’ll go get Boone, and then we’ll talk to Stone.”
Mojo and Tex hurried after me. Mojo snared me by one arm. When I swung around, he and Tex gazed at me morosely. Tex shook his head. “Stone told us to kick him off the set. Nobody talks to Stone the way Boone did and keeps his job. Not even Boone. Plus Stone gave his word to his sister, and say what you will about Stone, but he keeps his word. Boone’s gone, Grace. And this time you can’t get him back.”
Okay, Noleene, time to cut your losses and head for the swamps.
I tried not to think about Grace while I tossed my worldly possessions into two big leather duffels and a hanging suit bag. I tried not to think about Armand, either, about how I’d tell him I’d meant to choose between love and guilt but just ended up carrying both on my shoulders like heavy devils. Not that Armand would blame me. He was a romantic and a realist. Oh, yeah. “No problemo, bro,” he’d say. “Just cool your heels until I
get out of the joint next month, and then we’ll hit Vegas.”
Yeah. Then the problemo’s would really start.
“Suck it up, Noleene,” I said out loud. “And get the hell out of town before Gracie shows up here and tries to do right by you. Unless you like bein’ treated kindly by a woman who doesn’t love you.”
If I hadn’t had a plane to catch in Atlanta I’d have sat down in a corner somewhere, and cried. I’ve always thought men shouldn’t feel funny about squawling. In prison, unloading a few tears at night had given me a kind of sanity and freedom. I could sure have used that sense of letting go, now.
“Let her go,” I said for emphasis. I threw my luggage into a rental car and turned to look at the big blue mountains in the distance. Looking toward the Downs. Toward Grace.
“Au revoir, chere,” I said. That was all I could manage. Otherwise, I’d need that corner.
My cell phone buzzed. I nearly ripped it from my belt, intending to turn the damned thing off, until I noticed the number on its screen. A Louisiana area code. The office of a nice old parish priest who ministered to the Catholic cons at Angola and anyone else who needed to bend his and God’s ears. A chill went through my gut.
“Father Roubeaux,” I said into the phone. “What’s happened to my brother?”
“I just found out. His parole came through a few weeks early. He didn’t want you to know. He got out two days ago. And he’s disappeared.”
“I’m on my way.”
A minute later I was driving toward Atlanta faster than any ex-con should drive with happy-go-lucky cops in the neighborhood. Fear clotted inside me.
Armand, what the hell are you trying to do for me?
“Armand Noleene got out of prison early and he’s disappeared? That makes no sense. He and Boone had plans. Why would Armand—”
“Mrs. Vance, I’m only telling you what I’ve been told to tell you.” A uniformed security man frowned at me from the doorway at Casa Senterra. By the gate, someone had removed the canvas cover from the Persimmon Hall plaque, restoring the grand old house to its former dignity. I stood on the veranda with G. Helen, Mika, and Roarke beside me. Persimmon Hall was eerily quiet. Stone, Diamond and their entire entourage were already on a private jet headed for L.A. News of the movie’s meltdown was all over Dahlonega and starting to hit the national entertainment news. Stone had fled in disgust.
Charming Grace Page 30